A variety of depressive states, ranging from moods induced in the laboratory to major depressive syndromes, are linked with deficits in remembering. Some previous attempts to address these deficits have proposed that depression reduces the mental capacity to attend to, learn about, and recall our experiences. Other research, however, has demonstrated that depressed individuals can capably perform tasks that are well structured. The present research incorporates both types of findings within the following framework: Depression reduces processing initiative. Depressed persons do not initiate effortful processing strategies, but they are capable of using them when guided by the task. The first objective of the planned experiments is to test the initiative-based account of depressive deficits in free recall by varying the degree of task constraint. The second objective is to compare deficits derived from induced depressive moods to deficits associated with depression as it naturally occurs in college students and outpatients in the community. The long-range goal is to define the nature of deficits in processing initiative. Do they reflect impaired self-monitoring or impaired motivation? Possible therapeutic applications of the research include the structuring of cognitive tasks for the purpose of building feelings of competence and, thereby, short-circuiting the spiral of depressive cognitions.